“Alternative facts”: The term manages to be tedious, ridiculous and perilous at once — a real sign of the times. For anyone who doesn’t remember, Kellyanne Conway introduced it in early 2017 to defend the White House’s falsehoods about attendance numbers at Donald Trump’s inauguration the week before. … Her […] Read more »
Who was most likely to share fake news in 2016? Seniors.
This week, the New York Times broke the news that Democratic activists posted misleading Facebook pages and Twitter feeds during the 2017 U.S. Senate race in Alabama. That’s just the latest iteration in the ongoing saga of online disinformation and “fake news” since the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Researchers have […] Read more »
85% of Republicans Reject That Climate Change Is a Serious Problem That Requires Action
The United States remains the only developed democracy where The Climate Change Debate is primarily over whether climate change is real. Most places, the debate is over what to do about it. But not in the World’s Greatest Democracy, where one of the two major political parties our system allows […] Read more »
Nurses Again Outpace Other Professions for Honesty, Ethics
More than four in five Americans (84%) again rate the honesty and ethical standards of nurses as “very high” or “high,” earning them the top spot among a diverse list of professions for the 17th consecutive year. At the same time, members of Congress are again held in the lowest […] Read more »
Americans are scattered and divided over which source they most trust for news
Far more Americans get their news from local and network TV than from cable TV, but when asked what political news source they trust most, more name cable channels CNN or Fox News than almost any other source. A Washington Post Fact Checker poll used an open-ended format to ask […] Read more »
A new theory for why Republicans and Democrats see the world differently
“Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is. Fear is perhaps our most primal instinct, after all, so it’s only logical that people’s level […] Read more »